The ruling marks the latest legal challenge to Meta's AI practices and could intensify scrutiny of how major technology companies obtain data for AI development.
A federal judge has refused to let Meta off the hook, ruling that the tech giant must face a lawsuit over allegations it used pirated adult films to train its AI systems.
The legal battle began in July 2025 when Strike 3 Holdings, which404 Medianotes owns major platforms such as Blacked, first took Meta to court.
Strike 3 Holdings launched its legal action after unsealed internal communications from aseparate lawsuitexposed Meta's data collection tactics.
Those documents revealed the tech giant had extracted more than 81 terabytes of content by scraping Anna's Archive, a notorious open-source search engine dedicated to hosting pirated media ranging from books and television series to films and adult material.
An inquiry conducted by Strike 3 Holdings discovered that Meta employees or systems allegedly used 47 of the company's IP addresses to pirate its content.
Between 2018 and 2025, those networks were allegedly used to download 2,396 of the studio's videos, resulting in a total of 6,008 individual downloads.
According to the lawsuit, network traffic linked directly to Meta's corporate offices behaved 'consistently in non-human patterns', pointing to 'mass infringement beyond what a human could consume'.
In the wake of the alleged automated downloading operation, the firms are seeking damages of up to $359 million (£267.87 million).
Thursday's ruling by Judge Lee blocked Meta's effort to have the case dismissed, allowing the litigation to move forward.
Source: International Business Times UK
